‘NATO’s disastrous expansion at the core of the Ukraine conflict’

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a press conference before a Foreign Affairs ministers meeting at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on December 2, 2014. (AFP Photo/John Thys) / AFP

he principle cause of the Ukraine crisis was the West pressing Kiev to enter the EU Association Agreement and NATO’s extremely disastrous eastwards expansion, Samir Dathi, National Officer of the Stop the War Coalition, told RT.

NATO announced its
expansion eastwards in Europe because of the Ukrainian crisis.
Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Russia was violating the
Ukraine peace agreement signed in Minsk on September 5. He urged
Moscow to remove “Russian forces from near the Ukrainian
border.” The alliance also approved a quick reaction force
and a permanent military presence near Russia.

RT:What do you think is the reason for the
timing of this?

Samir Dathi: NATO and the West have been talking
about creating a rapid reaction force for months. Back in
September in Newport at NATO’s summit meeting, I think it was a
first time when they discussed this. I think this is a fairly
predictable development. The conflict that NATO is facing in
Ukraine is different to what they have been used to for a number
of years. Since the end of the Cold War, since 1990, America and
NATO have enjoyed a kind of global imperial supremacy. They have
been able to go around the world at their own leisure in their
own time pulverizing third world countries without much
retaliation: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and so on, so forth. But
now with Ukraine they face a much more significant adversary -
Russia. And they don’t have the military means to really deal
with this new type of challenge. So they need to reconfigure
their military, and to do that they need a rapid reaction force.
They need to be able to mobilize thousands of troops at a
moment’s notice to meet challenges from Russia, as and when they
arrive, perceived challenges.

RT:Stoltenberg says the decision to expand
eastwards was a direct response to the Ukrainian crisis. Do you
think it will help to resolve the conflict or it is only going to
make it worse?

SD: NATO has been expanding eastwards for some
time since 1990 and it has been making things a lot worse. The
most immediate cause of the conflict in Ukraine was this European
deal that the West wanted Yanukovich, the then head of Ukraine,
to enter into which would have imposed the whole host of
neo-liberal austerity reforms onto Ukraine which would have
completely destroyed the lives of the ordinary Ukrainian people.
That initially precipitated this conflict. The eastwards
expansion of NATO has been absolutely disastrous. And the
conflict that we now are seeing is an inexorable consequence of
that move eastwards.

‘West gripped by fear of Russian influence in Eastern Ukraine’

Ivan Eland, Defense analyst, thinks that the West “is
suspecting that Russia is resupplying and reinforcing the rebels
in Eastern Ukraine” and that is why it is “creating this
rapid reaction force.”

RT:Why has this announcement come now? What
do you make of the timing of it?

Ivan Eland: I think the tensions between Russia
and Ukraine are well-known and I think the West is suspecting
that Russia is resupplying and reinforcing the rebels in Eastern
Ukraine. And that is what is going on here - they are very
nervous, so they are upping the air patrols around the Baltics,
they are rotating forces to the Baltics and Poland, and they are
also creating this rapid reaction force which will take effect in
early 2015, and also then will become permanent later on.

RT:The NATO chief said the confrontation
with Russia might "get out of control.” What do you think he
meant by that?

IE: I think there is some trepidation in the
West that the Russians will escalate this into a full-blown
invasion of Eastern Ukraine and perhaps even go further into
Ukraine. This is a fear in the West and that is what is driving
these measures to symbolically say to Russia: “Listen, halt
your activities in Eastern Ukraine!”

RT:Stoltenberg also went on to say that the
decision to expand eastwards was a direct response to the
Ukrainian crisis. In your opinion, will it help to resolve the
conflict or could it only make it worse?

IE: Anytime you ratchet things up it definitely
makes things worse. I think Ukraine ultimately is going to have
to rather than being in one alliance or another it is going to
have to be independent, it is going to have devolution of
authority to its regions. It can trade both with the EU and
Russia. Certainly NATO should not take in Ukraine; it should be
an independent country.

RT:What do you think will be Russia’s
response to this latest NATO statement?

IE: Unfortunately, there is sort of tit-for-tat
type of response. I’m hoping Russia will not escalate it even
further. But I don’t know if that will happen or not. This crisis
does have a potential “get out of hand,” but I think
that there is blame on both sides in this crisis.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.